


Without Drug, or Herb, or any Witch's Spell

by colazitron



Series: 2020 December Prompts [4]
Category: Watcher Entertainment RPF
Genre: (Almost), Dubious Ethics, Established Relationship, Love Potion/Spell, M/M, Potions Accident, Secret Santa, relating to the potion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:48:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27881754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colazitron/pseuds/colazitron
Summary: All Brittney wants is for Shane to draw her name in Secret Santa so she'll get the pie he said he'd make. That's not what happens.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Series: 2020 December Prompts [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036338
Comments: 20
Kudos: 60





	Without Drug, or Herb, or any Witch's Spell

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N RE THE DUBIOUS ETHICS TAG AND ALSO A SPOILER**
> 
> It's very mild, but the basic conceit of this fic is that Brittney slips Shane a potion without his knowing about it. This potion has the unintended effect of making him display some amorous intentions towards her. As soon as she realises, she asks for Ryan's help to fix it. She's very apologetic and it was all an accident, but the whole thing is still a little dubious, so to be on the safe side - if that's not for you, then give this one a skip. :)
> 
> for anon who asked for someone slipping Shane a love potion and Ryan getting jealous. This isn't quite that but... almost? It's also technically a continuation of that first fic with the mistletoe kisses.

Steven suggests they do office Secret Santa and after initial agreement from everyone, Katie lays down rules. They’ll draw names the following Tuesday, there’ll be a budget limit, homemade gifts are encouraged but not required. TJ grumbles good-naturedly about how he already has a child to shop for and he doesn’t need any others, and Shane laughs and claps Ryan on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry, you know Bergoogoo’s easy to please.”

Ryan doesn’t bother disagreeing - with the statement or the implication. “It’s true.”

When Shane grins down at him, his eyes have that extra sparkle he gets when Ryan plays along with a bit. Ryan really likes that sparkle.

They haven’t exactly… spoken. About what happened the other day with the mistletoe and the kissing and then how there was more kissing when Ryan had dropped Shane off at home all prim and proper like teenagers on a first date. But it’s been somehow different between them anyway. The same in all the ways Ryan wouldn’t want it to change, but with a kind of extra charge to it. The idea that they’re probably going to be doing more kissing in the future.

So, anyway, Ryan likes that sparkle.

For another few minutes the office is abuzz with excited chatter about who is hardest to shop for, and friendly bantering about who will give the best gifts and then Shane says, “whoever I get I’ll definitely make them pie or something, so if anyone’s allergic against anything, let me know.” And just like that the wind changes and everyone within earshot is trying to convince Shane to pick _their_ name. Somehow baking that pie for their Weird/Wonderful episode had pushed Shane down a baking kick, and Ryan doesn’t mind to say he’s been getting really good at it. He wouldn’t mind some pie himself, if he’s perfectly honest.

Shane laughs at them all, flattered and a little uncomfortable about it. “You know that’s not how Secret Santa works.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Brittney quips, and grabs Shane by the upper arms to look him in the eyes. “We want pie.”

Ryan laughs, because she’s tiny and adorable and Shane looks so spooked by her and the intensity she’s leveling at him, like he just doesn’t know what the appropriate response is.

“Plus, it’s fun,” she grins.

Katie shoos them all back to their desks and that settles that.

When they make their way back over to their shared desks, Shane shoots Ryan a slightly unmoored but amused look, and Ryan reaches for him to give his forearm a gentle squeeze. Shane smiles and relaxes a bit, and they both fall back into their own rhythms for the rest of the day. At the end of it, Ryan takes Shane home again and Shane asks him inside for takeout and the suggestion of a movie they never get around to watching, too busy laughing over food and Shane’s tiny kitchen table. When Ryan leaves, he kisses Shane good-bye and grins to himself all the way down the stairs to his car.

Brittney brings Shane coffee on Tuesday, winking at him when he laughs.

“I really can’t draw your name on purpose,” he says, but takes the coffee anyway.

“Try,” Brittney insists, and Ryan watches Shane demur and take a sip, tips of his ears a little flushed.

“Alright, I’ll try,” he agrees.

Later, when they draw names, Ryan watches Shane look at the name Katie has written down on his slip of paper and smile a small, sweet smile. He wonders if that means the fates intervened and really did make him draw Brittney’s name.

Or if, maybe, he drew Ryan’s instead.

Shane refuses to say when Ryan asks, but that’s alright. He’ll find out, sooner or later.

Brittney and Shane develop some sort of rapport after that. They got along before as well, of course, because Shane’s nothing if not unfailingly polite to people who haven’t done anything to draw his ire, and Brittney is a star and a genius in ways that Ryan finds intimidating imagining being that brilliant at her age. All he remembers was flying by the seat of his pants in almost every aspect of his life and she makes it all look so easy.

But then again, he’s always been very familiar with the “fake it til you make it” strategy too.

Anyway, that’s not what this is. It takes Ryan a few days to notice, but Shane goes out of his way to be kind to her. He brings her water when he gets up to get a coffee refill, asks about her tasks and if she needs any help anywhere, remembers a story about her grandmother she told them a month ago and asks follow up questions. And it’s not that Shane’s usually a curmudgeon, but it still strikes Ryan as unusual. Since he catches Katie’s eyes once and she looks just as surprised to see this unfolding before them, he knows he’s not the only one either. But Katie just shrugs, and so he shrugs back, and that’s that.

It gets a bit weird when he weasels his way out of lunch with Ryan to spend more time with Brittney instead, but it would be _extremely_ silly to be jealous of one of their own employees when Shane is just trying to, what? Be a good boss, maybe? And an employee who’s a solid decade younger than Shane too. And so Ryan pushes that odd not-quite-just-surprise feeling in his chest far, far down, and goes to have lunch with Steven instead.

“Do you think there’s something wrong with Brittney that we don’t know about?” Steven asks over pho, and Ryan finds himself frowning at him.

“What?”

“I just mean, maybe she confided in Shane about something and that’s why he’s been extra nice to her. He brought her a brownie this morning. He didn’t even have one for himself,” Steven says.

Ryan tries to shrug it off. “Maybe he’d already eaten his.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Steven says, but he doesn’t sound particularly convinced.

“He hasn’t said anything to me,” Ryan goes on. “And I guess if she confided in him, specifically, he shouldn’t, right?”

“Yeah, no, you’re right,” Steven agrees. “I just hope she’s alright.”

Ryan feels his stomach pull a little tight at the idea of her struggling with… something. Something that’s made Shane act all whatever it is he’s doing.

“I’m sure she is,” he says. “I’m sure if it were something really bad, Shane would tell us anyway. Or urge her to tell us.”

Steven mulls it over and then nods decisively, seemingly satisfied. “Yeah, you’re right,” he says, and goes back to slurping his soup.

Ryan’s pretty sure that Brittney is fine - she hasn’t seemed at all off - but it’s still a little odd, this whole thing.

The thing is, Ryan knows what Shane is like around women he finds attractive. He can be charming and confident and quite the flirt, but as soon as he tries to actually mean it, he clams up. He’s awkward and almost a little hapless, too earnest to seem anything but clumsy. He makes up for it by paying extra attention and with little gifts. He’s--- he’s exactly what he’s like with Brittney now, is the thing.

But that’s ridiculous, because Ryan knows Shane doesn’t go for the freshly graduated type. And also because at the end of the day, when Ryan drives him home, it’s _Ryan_ he flirts with. With Ryan he’s not clumsy or hapless, because they’ve already gotten all of that out of the way over years of getting to know one another. They can just have fun, and in the end even the kissing is easy.

And that’s good. That means they’re good together.

Right?

He doesn’t expect for the whole thing to end with Brittney cornering him at the office just as he leaves the washroom, but that’s what happens.

“Can I talk to you for a second? Please?” she asks. “In private? It’s about, uh, Shane.”

Immediately, Ryan feels about fifty alarm bells go off in his head, and he hastily gestures towards their currently empty meeting room.

“Yeah, of course, come on. What’s going on?”

She closes the door behind them and nervously shifts from foot to foot and Ryan has to fight the urge to put more distance between them. Surely Shane didn’t say anything that made her uncomfortable? Or--?

Thankfully, before Ryan can start to spiral into territory he can’t imagine ever needing to touch with a ten foot pole, Brittney starts to talk.

“So, you remember Secret Santa?”

“Yeah, I remember Secret Santa,” Ryan echoes, now thoroughly confused. “Did you draw Shane’s name and need help with a gift or something?”

Brittney shakes her head, wringing her hands together in front of her. “No, I-- I think I accidentally gave him a love potion.”

She rushes the sentence out in a tumbling mess that takes Ryan a second or two to catch up with, and then he just finds himself staring at her.

“You think you what?” he asks.

Brittney shrinks. “I didn’t mean to!”

“Okay, start at the beginning,” Ryan says. “I’m not following.”

“The morning we drew names, I slipped him a potion in his coffee,” she confesses, and Ryan feels his hackles rise a little. That’s--- really not cool.

“I didn’t mean for it to-- it was only meant to, like, guide him to picking my name,” she hurriedly tacks on, and when she looks back up from the floor to meet his eyes, she looks absolutely devastated. “I just wanted that pie, but I think I must have done something wrong or something, because then he started, like…”

She trails off and makes an aborted gesture with her hand. “Being, you know. Extra nice.”

Ryan lets it sink in for a moment and then bites down on his lips to stop himself from laughing. “Uh-huh.”

“I didn’t notice at first because he’s always nice, right?” she goes on. “But then it got, like, kind of more than usual. And today I think he tried to ask me out.”

The laugh slips right back off Ryan’s face.

Brittney must see the change in his expression, because she rushes to reassure him. “He wasn’t gross about or anything and he backed off immediately and I’m not, like, making a complaint or anything, this is all my fault anyway, but I just--- I don’t know how to fix it. Can you help me?”

Ryan takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his hair. He’s not an expert in potions, but he thinks he can probably work it out. And if not he can always call mom in to help.

“I trust I don’t need to give you the ‘we don’t give people potions without their consent’ talk?” he says, satisfied when Brittney looks absolutely mortified and nods vigorously.

“Alright, good. I’ll get him fixed up, don’t worry.”

Brittney slumps in relief. “Thank you. I feel so shitty about it.”

Finally, Ryan can’t help but snort a laugh. “All of that just for a pie. And you don’t even know if he actually drew your name.”

“No, he did,” Brittney says, looking ashamed again. “He, um, told me.”

Ryan is going to assume that going by her expression the telling was less sharing of facts and more vaguely uncomfortable flirting and tries not to laugh about it because he knows Shane is going to be so mortified when he realises what he’s been doing.

“Do you think he’ll be mad at me?” Brittney asks, voice small.

Ryan puts a hand on her elbow carefully, hyper-aware of the touch in a way he usually isn’t. Still, she looks up at him with wide eyes and he tries to give her a comforting squeeze.

“He’ll be embarrassed, but he’ll be okay. He’ll just be a little weird for a while, probably.”

She nods. “Thank you. And I’m really sorry.”

He gives her arm another squeeze and then steps back. “You should probably say that to him. Eventually. Maybe not right away.”

She nods again, eagerly.

“Alright. I’ll take him home. You’re going to have to tell Katie,” Ryan says. “Consider that punishment. And text me your potion recipe so I know what I’m dealing with.”

Brittney grimaces, but takes it in stride. “Yeah, sure. Um, good luck.”

Ryan sighs, and then laughs again.

“For pie,” he repeats as they step back out into the hallway. “You could’ve just asked.”

Brittney doesn’t say anything else.

“Are you going to tell me why we’re playing hookie?” Shane asks, amused and fiddling with Ryan’s radio from the passenger seat to connect it to his phone.

Ryan grunts vaguely. “I’ll tell you when we’re back at mine.”

Shane makes an equally vague humming noise, and when Ryan looks over at him he’s grinning and waggling his eyebrows at him. “Alright, keep your secrets.”

Ryan can’t help but laugh, but it’s not a conversation he’s looking forward to having.

At least Shane doesn’t seem particularly different. Aside from how Brittney seems to take up more and more of his attention when she’s around, when she’s not there isn’t really any change to his behaviour. He still seems to delight in few things as much as teasing Ryan and obscure anecdotes from various points in human history or whatever music he’s currently really into. He laughs at Ryan’s jokes and he looks at Ryan like he’s expecting this surprise half-day to be connected to the whole recent kissing development in their relationship.

Ryan wishes.

Instead, he has to sit Shane down at his kitchen table while he reads Brittney’s text and sighs with relief. She’s basically tried to create a guided version of a luck potion. It’s doable, because they wouldn’t make them illegal for exams if it weren’t, but it's not easy. At least he’s pretty sure he knows where she went wrong. And luckily it should be an easy fix.

Shane lasts about three minutes of watching Ryan throw things together into a blender before he loses his patience.

“Not that this isn’t riveting, but what the fuck’s going on, Ryan?” he asks.

Ryan gives him a beatific smile and sends the blender roaring to life, miming at Shane that he can’t possibly talk over the noise if only because he knows it’ll annoy him.

Then, he fills the potion into a glass and hands it to Shane.

“Uh, what’s this for?” Shane asks, staring down at the sparkling, blue liquid suspiciously.

Ryan sighs. “So, Brittney thinks she accidentally love potioned you. This is going to fix it.”

“That’s absurd,” Shane says immediately, but he’s staring down at the glass like he’s contemplating it.

“So you think it’s normal that you tried to ask her out today?” Ryan asks, because if Shane does that’s a whole other issue. Love potions are good at directing people’s attention away from noticing their effects, but what Brittney gave him wasn’t intended to be a love potion, so Ryan’s hoping it’s only a little misguided in what way it’s trying to make Shane ‘pick’ her.

Shane must come to some sort of conclusion of his own, because then he chugs the potion in three big gulps without any further questions. When he’s done he looks up at Ryan with wide eyes like ‘what now?’, and Ryan can only shrug at him. He’s not sure how long it’s going to take to counteract the other potion.

“Am I supposed to feel someth---” Shane asks, but then cuts himself off, eyes going wide before his whole face turns red and he presses it down against Ryan’s kitchen table, covering his head with his arms.

Ryan allows himself a relieved grin.

“I take it it’s working?”

“Leave me to die,” Shane groans.

Ryan laughs and sits down next to him, reaching out to rub a hand over his back. “You’re okay.”

“I can’t believe I did that.”

Ryan hums. He won’t ask.

“I have to apologise to Brittney, oh my god,” Shane says. “She must be so uncomfortable.”

“Dude, it’s okay. She just feels shitty about potioning you,” Ryan says. “She’s worried you’re mad at her.”

“Mad at _her?_ She’s not the one who---” Shane says and then breaks off into another pained groan.

Ryan grabs him by the shoulders and then the face to pull his head up.

“Hey, look at me,” he says, leaning around Shane so he can’t look away from him quite so easily. “None of this was your fault, okay. You did nothing wrong.”

Shane swallows but then nods, his head moving in Ryan’s hands. Then he lets it drop back into his own arms.

“Do you have anything that’ll make me forget the last two weeks?” he whines.

Ryan laughs and runs his hand through Shane’s hair, pulling at the ends teasingly until Shane turns his head just enough to be able to look up at Ryan.

“Sure you want that?” Ryan asks, quietly.

Colour slowly returns to Shane’s face again, and he sighs, smiling up at Ryan and peeking out of his arms hideout.

“No,” he says, that twinkle Ryan likes so much back in his eyes too. “Not all of it.”

Ryan grins down at him and gently pinches the lobe of his ear.

“Hasn’t been a total wash,” Shane adds and then stretches his leg out underneath the table so his foot bumps into Ryan’s and keeps it there, their toes overlapping just a little.

“I’m still your favourite then?” Ryan asks, teasing.

Shane smiles back and straightens back up, reaching for Ryan to pull him into a soft kiss.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he says quietly, forehead resting against Ryan’s. “Pretty sure that’s a done deal.”

Ryan feels his breath catch and his heart trip over itself. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Shane confirms and kisses Ryan again. “Can’t get rid of me now, Bergara.”

“Good,” Ryan says, reaching out to pull Shane closer, half out of his chair. “Now whatever shall we do with this free afternoon we have?”

Shane laughs quietly and gets up from his chair, pressing Ryan back against the backrest of his own when he leans over him for a far more solid kiss.

“I think I’ve got a few ideas,” he says, hands gentle but sure as he drags Ryan out of his chair and into the bedroom.

They’re very good ideas.

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still taking prompts [over on my tumblr](http://fille-lioncelle.tumblr.com/ask)!


End file.
